Athene

Athene is a commercial operating system for use in the home and office Athene is a commercial operating system developed by Rocklyte Systems for use in the home and office. Athene combines years of Rocklyte's R&D with the latest Linux technology to create one of the fastest operating systems available today.

With boot times as fast as five seconds and advanced graphics technology not available in standard Linux distributions, Athene is the best low-cost alternative to Windows for your computer desktop

Here are some key features of "Athene":

Support for all Modern Graphics Cards
The commercial version supports any VESA compliant graphics card and approximately 100 graphics cards are directly supported for full hardware acceleration. This includes cards from NVIDIA, ATI, 3DFX, 3DLabs, Intel, S3, SiS, Matrox and more.

The Latest Software Advances and High Levels of Performance
Athene uses a modern graphical user interface that includes the very latest graphics and special effect techniques. Translucent windows & gadgets, fade effects, icon scaling and shadow casting are just a few of the featured capabilities.
The commercial release also boasts the fastest performing desktop of any system based on the Linux kernel and is proven in benchmarks. The OS is compiled specifically for Pentium processors for maximum performance.

X11 Compatible
We've developed an X11 compatibility server so that you don't have to go without your favourite Linux programs. Run popular programs like Mozilla, Open Office, GIMP and GAIM all from within the Athene desktop.

Plug and Play Hardware Support
Plug and play support is provided for multimedia devices such as monitors, graphics cards, audio, mouse and USB devices. Free yourself from ever having to setup your hardware again!

Live CDROM
Athene works straight from the CD without pre-installation! Take it with you and use it anywhere. Athene can work with any compatible PC without ever touching the hard drive. When you do install, it takes roughly 10 minutes to do so and partitioning software is available to reorganise your hard-drive. Athene provides a boot menu so that you can keep existing operating systems on your hard drive.

Multi-Platform Support
Do you need to run Athene but don't have the ability to install the full version on the hard drive? Or do you need to install it on a corporate PC but just don't have the permission? No problem - we provide Windows and Linux versions for just this situation. These versions are smaller but still capable of running all DML and Pandora compliant software available from us and other developers.

Software Plugin Support
Enhance your system by adding data plugins from us and other vendors. Plugins allow your installed software programs to recognise the latest data formats (such as image and audio files) without having to upgrade each application individually.

Multimedia Support
Athene includes native support for a number of different multimedia file types. Audio support includes WAV, MOD, S3M, IT and XM files. Image support covers PNG, PCX, JPEG and IFF files. Font support covers TrueType and Windows bitmap standards.

International Support
Unicode support is provided as standard for the support of international languages. Enhanced unicode fonts can be installed (available separately) to ensure that unicode characters are displayed correctly.

Rewriteable Interface
Create new interfaces or edit the existing ones with Athene's programmable GUI. Now you can generate your own dream interface, either just for you or to share amongst the Athene community.

Object Based
Everything that 'physically exists' in Athene is an object, whether it be a file, picture, window or application. This provides more consistent management of data between software applications and a more predictable experience when it comes to using the operating system. Network communication is also much simpler, as the objects themselves can be directly passed between Athene systems, rather than converting them to files first.

Unified Data Model
Powerful data recognition means that you don't need to worry about file-types such as pcx, jpeg, iff or png anymore. Any file format supported by Athene will apply to all programs that run in your desktop. Support for new file formats can be installed easily and instantly supported by all your programs regardless of their antiquity.

Object Scripting
Athene supports the Dynamic Markup Language as standard for editing and recreating the operating system environment, as well as component-based applications. Power users can edit scripts to make detailed changes to how the OS works, or create entirely new scripts to perform specific tasks. Scripts are also responsible for presentation management, including the way in which components are positioned, displayed and how they interact with the user.

Rewriteable Applications
Athene's emphasis on object scripting provides a unique application model that says goodbye to executable files and welcomes an entirely new method of application development. Using the power of DML scripts, you can edit, add and remove features from your applications so that they are more suitable for your working style. As a power user, you can go so far as to take foreign applications and merge them together, creating hybrid applications for your own personal use.

Multi-lingual Applications
The development of multi-lingual applications is made easier by storing the language definitions of an application in a script file, rather than compiling them into an executable. By easing the development of multi-lingual applications, international users can benefit from a wider variety of applications that support multiple languages. Software developers also benefit from this encouragement by reaching out to a wider audience. Full support for unicode is included so that international character sets can be displayed correctly.

Scalability
By allowing users to create the specifications of their own operating system, it is possible to create truly scalable environments by adding or removing components. This means that Athene can be scaled down to work on small embedded devices, or scaled up to take advantage of more powerful desktops and servers.

Micro-Tasking
Micro-tasking allows large applications like word processors and graphics editors to be split into multiple tasks instead of operating in a normal multi-tasking task space. This can prevent large applications from completely crashing in the event of software failure, as faults are limited to a smaller operating space. This feature is better than threads, which are not protected from each other, and is also of great benefit to computers with two or more processing units.


What's New in This Release:

New version of QikInstall now supports package dependencies, a new interface and improved functionality.

New version of Uninstall created to support the new QikInstall features.

New version of ZTerm developed. Supports multiple consoles, font selection, translucency and background styles, silence and activity alarms, cut and paste operations, and unicode is also supported by default.

Added new Stripes class, provides a fast means for drawing line patterns.

Added new Divider class, for splitting interfaces into resizable sections.

Added new ColourDialog class for standardising the user selection of custom colours.

Added new MenuBar class, to simplify the management of menu bars.

Added new MixerDialog class, for standardising user manipulation of the audio mixers.

Added new FontDialog class, used for asking the user to select fonts.

Added new Icon class to assist in the creation and management of desktop icons.

Added new Panorama class, provides a scaled down view of the desktop for scrolling to off-screen windows.

Added new Dimple class, used for drawing patterns of dots at any size.

The icon server now supports image overlays.

Increased the speed of pkzip file decompression.

Fixed cut and paste problems sometimes occurring between tasks due to clipboard resets.

Added support for the decoding of GIF images.

Directory display speed has been improved in the File Manager.

New System Options features: It is now possible to configure menu popup speed, fading and scrollbar opacity; The DPMS mode can now be configured in the screen saver section; New user administration section for Linux systems; New network and Internet administration features for the commercial version.

Indigo Desktop: Fixed scroll jittering caused by very large windows. Added new smooth scrolling feature that can be turned on and off from a special desktop icon.

Omega Desktop: Taskbar buttons are now always displayed at the top of the screen bar.

Clicking on a menu bar and then moving the mouse between menus will automatically show the menu that the mouse is positioned over.

Added support for the Spanish language, selectable from the Locale options menu.

German keymap added.

Gamma correction settings are now restored correctly on user login.

Fixed a MiniPlayer crash, caused by stopping and replaying MOD files.

Added a restart option to the Run class, allows a task to be automatically restarted if it crashes.

DML now supports the conversion of flags to their string equivalency by preceding field references with a $ character.

Combo boxes with more than 8 items now utilise scrollbars to limit the amount of vertical space taken up by the combobox menu.

Added new 'procedure' tag to DML, for speeding up local procedure execution in scripts.

Runscript will no longer attempt to execute DML scripts when they are not defined as programs.

When creating new directories in the File Manager, the correct permission flags of the directory are now displayed.

[Linux] The X11 server now supports the AltGr key and will adjust automatically if you change the Athene keymap.

[Linux] X11 windows are now assigned correct application icons, based on the window titlebar names. The name resolution database is user editable, and found in system:config/software/x11icons.cfg.

[Linux] Implemented new ALSA based audio system. User audio settings are now loaded corectly on user login. Volume settings applied in Athene are now system wide, so they affect X11 applications as well. The audio server is now automatically restarted by the system if it crashes.

[Commercial] Latest SNAP graphics drivers added to the code base.

[Commercial] Login screen now initiates DPMS automatically if it remains idle for more than 3 minutes.

[Commercial] When logging in, the 'default' desktop is now automatically adjusted to match whatever desktop the user was using last.

[Commercial] Added new 'fastplug' hardware support system for faster booting (about 25% faster than the old hotplug system).

[Commercial] Fixed swap partition auto-mounting problems on bootup.

[Commercial] Bash scripts are now treated as programs when run from the File Manager (if the +x bit is set).